The present invention relates to binoculars, and more specifically to electro-imaging cameras.
Binoculars are an optical instrument having two telescopic optical systems (telescopes), each telescope having an objective lens, an image erector and an eyepiece lens. The binoculars provide an enlarged, stereoscopic image of a distant object, through the use of the two telescopes.
Conventionally, two methods are used to display a stereoscopic image recorded by a video camera or a still-video camera.
The first method is to record both right and left telescopic images using separate cameras. Since this method requires two cameras it is cumbersome and difficult to implement. Further, this method is impractical because when a still image is taken of a moving object, both cameras must simultaneously track the moving object and open their shutter mechanisms at precisely the same time.
The second method records stereoscopic images using a single recording camera having a pair of image recording optics, which corresponds to the pair of telescopic images. The operation and handling of the equipment is much easier than with the first method since only one camera is used. However, the camera has only one viewfinder, and therefore it is difficult to frame the stereoscopic image. Therefore there is usually a discrepancy between the picture that was seen in the viewfinder and the picture that was recorded by the camera.